


When Circles Come Around

by Tassos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-04
Updated: 2008-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding Sam's room freshman year hadn't been hard; it was in the package of information that was sent to their Nebraska mail drop over the summer</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Circles Come Around

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to fryadvocate

John drove slowly around Campus Drive looking for numbers or building names or anything that resembled a dorm that Sam might be living in. There were plenty of candidates, too many to make it easy. Finding his room freshman year hadn’t been hard; it was in the package of information that was sent to their Nebraska mail drop over the summer. John hadn’t picked it up till November when Sam was already long gone. He’d flipped through the booklets spouting out a happy welcome for all of two seconds before slamming them in the trash, disgusted and disgruntled. The course catalog and the brochures and info for arrival had followed but he'd kept the letter from the dorm. _Dear Sam, We’re so excited to meet you!_, it said.

When he’d swung by last year, he’d seen Sam walking out of his dorm with two other boys, one of whom was Asian and half his height. John hadn't stuck around.

This year, John had no helpful mail to tell him where Sam was, and he was left driving in circles. It was mid afternoon and the place was buzzing with kids walking or ignoring traffic rules on their bikes. Fifteen thousand students, half of them undergraduates. It was like looking for a needle in a fucking haystack. Christ. John finally parked in a crowded lot across from Sam’s freshman dorm and stared at the building. He doubted Sam had stayed put. He sighed and resigned himself to a little legwork.

His map showed the housing office was nearby, so John went to find it. It was a straight shot from the parking lot in the pedestrian zone that seemed to cover most of the campus, and John nearly got hit by two bikers, the second sending him off balance enough to curse in the wake of the kid’s “sorry” thrown over a careless shoulder. Goddamn kids thinking that the rules didn’t apply to them. Goddamn school with its fancy ideas and no respect -

“Dad.”

John spun when he heard the voice that was as familiar as his own. And there was Sam, not twenty feet away with a backpack on his shoulders and a buzz cut. John blinked, too surprised to be embarrassed at getting caught.

“Dad,” Sam repeated, his voice tight.

“Sam.” John straightened his shoulders, not at all prepared for this. Get in, check up on him, get out. That was the plan. Of course, since when did anything to do with Sam ever go to plan?

His boy looked good, frowning at him and clearly not happy to see him, but healthy and, Jesus, taller if that were possible. This close John could see he’d put on another two inches and twenty pounds, finally filling out from the lanky teenager who’d stormed off almost two years ago.

“What are you doing here?” The frown deepened. “Is Dean-”

“Dean's fine,” John soothed, glad that Sam still cared enough to ask. “He’s fine.”

Sam’s worry faded but the frown remained, and John didn't know what to say, wishing he’d had another envelope to help him this year, but here they were with no easy way to back out. He was sorely tempted, though, with Sam staring, waiting, arms crossed now and his feet that much wider, digging in. John felt the familiar bristle straightening his spine and damn it why did Sam always do that?

"Then why are you here?”

“I should go.” John didn't want to have this fight. Not here in sunny Stanford where it was already a done deal and he was the one invading Sam's territory. The students all around just reinforced the point.

Sam let him get two steps before turning with him, arms dropping, biting out, “Dad,” irritated or -

“I came to check on you,” John said, surprising them both. He looked over the small lawn they stood next to, a couple kids sitting barefoot in the grass, a couple more juggling at the far end. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him but he glanced away when John turned back, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“Oh.”

“Right.” John scrubbed a hand through his hair. Well, he’d checked. Sam was fine. His head was shaved but he was fine. No need to stick around where he wasn’t wanted so he started walking again.

“You want coffee?” Sam blurted, stopping him short. “Before you . . .” he waved a hand vaguely, expression saying it was no big deal if John didn't. But it would be.

“Yeah.” John’s voice creaked a little so he cleared his throat. “Coffee would be great.”

Sam led him to the sprawling building across from the lawn where it seemed the whole school was still eating lunch at the tables outside. The CoHo - John eyed the sign but made no comment - was cool inside, dim without being too dark. Sam put two coffees on his ID card and led them to a table in the back corner near the other entrance. He paused when they got to the table, then shifted so John could have the seat with his back to the wall. It was a small thing, so familiar from the road that John would have missed it if Sam hadn't hesitated.

He sat and knew better than to comment on it while Sam busied himself dumping sugar into his cup. Instead John took a sip of his own coffee and found he had something to say after all. “I see you finally got a haircut.”

Sam glanced up and snorted a laugh, rubbing a hand through the half inch of dark fuzz. “I lost a bet.”

“Must have been some bet.” John knew Sam hated to lose, and after the knock-down, drag-out fights they’d had over his hair, knew he wouldn’t risk it on nothing.

“It was . . . stupid really.” Sam shook his head. “Some of the guys wanted to do a beard growing contest. Loser loses it all.”

John eyed Sam’s chin that’s never sported much, at least when he was a teenager. “If only I knew what it took,” he said dryly.

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well. You hated my hair long.”

That he had, but looking at Sam’s shorn head now, John couldn't help missing it a little. It had been so much a part of him - including the arguments - that he wasn’t sure he recognized the kid he was sitting with.

Sam took another sip of his coffee. Fiddled with the sheath. John didn't know what to say now, and Sam wasn't helping him out. The last time they had a conversation that wasn't work related or a fight . . . John scratched his own stubble. He couldn't remember. Maybe that hunt when Dean was off on his own. Sam would have been fifteen or sixteen. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Sam was just as quiet and it made John feel a little bit better. It looked like neither one of them wanted to break this peace if they could help it, and that left them silent. John still wasn’t sure how it had come to this. Dealing with Sam had been like dealing with a brick wall sometimes and John had never known what to say. He had never been one much for words, finding too often that most things were too big to pin down without screwing it up. Exhibit A was sitting right across from him. Although at this point he probably couldn't make it any worse.

“So.” John cleared his throat. “How’s school?” Sam’s head shot up, eyes going wide. He didn’t move for a minute; plain as day, he couldn’t believe John was interested. Couldn’t believe John had even _asked_. For his part, John tried not to think about how many times he hadn't asked that question over the years.

“It’s, uh . . . it’s good,” Sam finally said, looking down. His fingernail slid under the seam of the coffee sheath. “I declared. History.” It came out more of a question as glanced at John, but he nevertheless barreled on. “I don’t know what I’ll concentrate in yet. Maybe European or Asian. Branch out a little bit.”

“Branch out?” John asked.

Sam nodded, looking up and at him, right in the eye. “From American. Who knew living everywhere would give me such a nuanced view of the country.” There was bitterness there and this time it was John looking away first into his coffee for answers. He wouldn’t say he was sorry because he wasn’t. He wouldn't apologize for protecting Sam the only way he knew how. But he felt a stab of regret anyway that this was how it all turned out.

“Anyway.” Sam took another sip of his coffee, the movement loosening the defiant edge to his jaw. “School’s good. I like it here,” he said like an echo of every conversation that preceded moving since he was eight years old. John couldn't tell if he was spoiling for a fight or not, and once upon a time, those words and that tone would have set John’s blood pressure over the edge, but now . . . It had been two years, and even though he and Dean finally had a rhythm between them, John still found himself counting heads and coming up short.

Sam looked at him now like he was waiting for John to drop the axe on the back of his neck, and God knew John had done that enough times, but now it wouldn’t change anything, and frankly, John was surprised to realize, he didn’t want it to. Because Sam? Sam looked good. He looked . . . happy, for all that he was sitting here in a coffee shop with his old man.

So John just nodded once, an acknowledgment that seemed to surprise Sam enough that it took another nod and a faint smile before he relaxed. John drank his coffee, nothing to add, but something like a comfortable silence settled between them.

“How’s Dean?” Sam asked a few minutes later.

John tipped back the last of the dregs. “He’s fine. Entered himself in a bingo tournament a couple hunts back,” John offered.  
“Got his ass handed to him by a bunch of retired church folks.”

Sam cracked his first genuine smile since they sat down, and John didn't add that the tournament had been in the hospital where Dean had been laid up recovering from a stab wound that had gone septic.

“I bet he hated that.”

John shrugged, his own smile twisting free. “He picked up a few new ways to swear.”

“Bet you're hating that.” Sam quirked his brow, and this time when John grinned and shook his head, it felt easy.

“‘Son of a crabbed dung heap’ is his favorite right now.”

“I always kinda liked pusboil,” said Sam, making John snort because he could remember more than one tussle Sam started after Dean had called him that.

“It changes things up at least.”

“Where -” Sam cut himself off, shrugged, the tension returning in an instant as if it had never gone. “Never mind.”

But John knew what the question was. “He was having a night out. I left before he got back.”

“Oh.” Sam’s cup was empty now, too. “Nearby?”

With no more coffee, John set the cup down deliberately, his skin crawling with the answer because it felt like the nail in the coffin to an argument he wasn’t sure they weren’t still having. But Sam was sitting still as a statue, and that’s what decided John because Sam was asking about his brother with the same look in his eye that Dean got when he looked over his shoulder and Sam wasn't there.

So he said, “New Mexico.”

Sam lifted his eyebrows at that, but there was admitting it and then there was not wanting to talk about it so John gave him a look that he hoped would let the matter lie. Sam’s jaw clenched instead. “Job?”

It took a second for him to understand that Sam meant here. John would look, of course he would. Dean would be fine on his own for a few days, and he was already here. It would be easy to say yes, confirm Sam’s suspicions and that would be that. But John said, “Haven’t looked yet,” carefully, because this, the two of them having a goddamned _conversation_, well he was pretty sure Dean wouldn’t believe it if he told him. “I'm sure there’ll be something.”

“Yeah,” said Sam, and John knew he was reading between the lines just fine, giving him this look that John for the life of him couldn't understand. That thought seemed to sum up their whole relationship.

“Well,” he said when the silence got to be too much. “I better go.”

He stood up without giving Sam a chance to protest and searched out a trash can while his son untangled himself from the table. His new height and bald head startled John all over again as he watched Sam pull on his backpack.

“What?” Sam shuffled under his scrutiny, suspicious again, always suspicious, but John just shook his head, not quite hiding his smile because that was his kid right there. Sam smiled back, cautiously, before leading them back out into the sunshine.

John had never been good with words, but he felt like he’d gotten something right today when Sam didn’t immediately bustle off, neither one of them knowing how to say goodbye without yelling. That he was out in the world alone still terrified John, but watching Sam as he waved easily to a trio passing by, he knew that as much as he wanted Sam with him, walking out had been the right decision.

John was about to nod and walk off when Sam asked, “So, is your phone number still good?”

He was looking past John, fingers twisting in his backpack strap. “Yeah,” said John after a pause too long, his voice going unexpectedly hoarse. Then he was reaching out and pulling Sam in and Sam was hugging him back just as tight. When they finally broke apart, it was easier to let go.

“Watch out for yourself, Sammy.”

Sam smiled for him, tight and wet around the edges. “I will.”

John nodded and clapped him on the shoulder before he finally turned away, trusting him to it. When he finally drove out of the parking lot, Sam was still in his rearview.


End file.
